To William Gladstone, 29 Booth Street, Manchester, 5 [September] 1859

Mary, Countess of Derby, and the Politics of Victorian Britain

10.1093/oso/9780198786252.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Jennifer Davey

Keyword(s):

Social Relations ◽

Political Life ◽

The Political ◽

Constitutional Rights ◽

Benjamin Disraeli ◽

Victorian Era ◽

William Gladstone ◽

Victorian Britain ◽

Political Landscape ◽

Key Events

Lady Mary Derby (1824–1900) occupied a pivotal position in Victorian politics, yet her activities have largely been overlooked or ignored. A Female Politician places Mary back into the political position she occupied and offers the first dedicated account of her career. Based on extensive archival research, including hitherto neglected or lost sources, this study reconstructs the political worlds Mary inhabited. Her political landscape was dominated by the machinations and intrigues of high politics and diplomacy. As this book uncovers, her political skill and acumen were highly valued by leading politicians of the day, including Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone, and she played a significant role in many of the key events of the mid-Victorian era. This included the passing of the Second Reform Act, the formation of Disraeli’s 1874 government, the Eastern Crisis of 1875–1878, and Gladstone’s 1880–1885 government. By exploring how one woman was able to exercise influence at the heart of Victorian politics, this book considers what Mary’s career tells us about the nature of political life in the mid nineteenth century. It sheds new light on the connections between informal and formal political culture, incorporating the politics of the home, letter-writing, and social relations into a consideration of the politics of Parliament and government. A Female Politician is a rich investigation of how a woman, with few legal or constitutional rights, was able to become a significant figure in mid-Victorian political life.

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Sir Charles Dilke and the British Intervention In Egypt, 1882: decision making In a nineteenth-century cabinet

British Journal of International Studies ◽

10.1017/s0260210500116717 ◽

1976 ◽

Vol 2 (3) ◽

pp. 231-245 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

M. E. Chamberlain

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Decision Making ◽

British Imperialism ◽

Exact Role ◽

The Unconscious ◽

William Gladstone ◽

Two Generations ◽

Liberal Government

“There's Dilke that has done it all”, remarked Wilfrid Scawen Blunt to Lord Blandford as they watched Dilke walk down Piccadilly one day in July 1882.1 The “it” was the British intervention in Egypt which entangled Britain in Egyptian affairs for two generations. More soberly, Louis Mallet, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the India Office, wrote to Evelyn Baring a year later that the Liberal government of William Gladstone had made themselves “the unconscious, and some of them (not all) the unwilling instruments of a policy from which Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury would have shrunk, and which is big with future disaster”. “Dilke and Chamberlain” he wrote, “I consider mainly responsible for the Egyptian war.” In The Trouble Makers, A. J. P. Taylor came to the conclusion, “The occupation of Egypt in 1882 marked Gladstone's decisive breach with Radicalism. Indeed it ruined Radicalism for more than a generation. It began modern British Imperialism…”. How ironic if the ruin of British radicalism was brought about by the two leading radicals of Gladstone's predominantly Whig administration. What do the Dilke and Chamberlain papers among others reveal about the exact role of the two men in the crisis ?

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